High Explosive Lights
by oh-masochist
Summary: Bella was a bright and naive girl, turned cynical and unfeeling by what she thought was love. Edward is a boy who believes in truth, beauty, and love, despite some hidden scars of his own. Snark, combativeness, slow burning passion. AU/AH
1. Hollowed Out : Prologue

**Consider_ this_ a disclaimer.**

**I got this idea pretty much out of no where, and wanted to try it out.  
This first chapter is just a prologue of sorts to let you get a feel for Bella's character.**

**Enjoy.**

**x  
**

* * *

"Do you feel it yet?"

I sit back and let my head ease and fall, and when it hits the bed, colors shoot in front of my eyes, blues and yellows and emeralds, violet, fuschia, a million colors, a million little leaves falling from silver trees with dangling crystal half-bloomed bulbs.

I am so high right now.

As I watch, the trees fade into the background and a face bursts into my vision, lined technicolor, neon lights, pale even in imagery with a strong jaw and neon yellow hair. I shake my head to clear my eyes and the vision dissipates.

"Do you feel it?"

I open my eyes to a world gloomy and grey, austere compared to the life inside my eyelids. The first thing I saw was Mike's face, hovering over mine, eyes glazed and sparkling and catching the dim light from the candles he'd lit before we started. I think of the candles now, small little tea lights bought exclusively for the purpose of times like this; Mike was infamous for luring girls into his room with the promise of an escape, a prescribed forgetting, and then attacking while they were weak. Or maybe attacking wasn't the right word. He'd never force a girl if she said no, but that was the point; none of them ever did. None of them ever felt the need to deny.

And after feeling first-hand the effects, I can safely shuffle myself also into that category.

I close my eyes again, and I feel him shift over me, lift me and I'm limp, drop me onto his bed as gently as he can manage. I open my eyes from the jolt and as he climbs the bed, pressing me into it, shifting with his weight, my head lolls to the side and the slight gloss in my eyes fractures the light of the candles into a million slanted rainbows over his blue walls. I feel his lips on my neck, cold and gentle, and for a moment I feel nothing. It feels like he's kissing me through water; I feel numbed. But after a second, he clamps down with his teeth, and my blood comes rushing back to my skin. I hear myself moan, and I can't stop it, don't want to, and soon he's imposing himself between my legs, pressing into my center, and when I hear the creak of the bed springs and the slide of his zipper, I don't make any move to stop him.

This is what I've come to.  
This is what my life has become.

I can feel the slide of denim as he pulls off my jeans, and only a dim pressure as he pushes in; when he starts to move, I try not to think of blonde hair and grey eyes and the smell of cinnamon on my skin. I try to focus, try not to, try anything to get myself out of my own head, but all I can think of is the slide and pull of other times this has happened with someone more appropriate.

My head falls back to the side and this time the light is broken and blurred into color by flowing tears.


	2. Chapter 1

**You know, I'm really writing this story purely for myself. I need to prove to myself that I actually can finish a story that I start. And I wanna get certain lines, images out of my head.  
**

**Chapter 2.**

**Don't own, don't sue.  
**

* * *

Something in me died that day.

So easily said. So easily let go. The time we'd spent, love, heat, passion, memories. I'd given him everything, and he threw it back into my face in a sunny school parking lot.

I remember vivid details about that day, but I wish I didn't. I wish the proclivities I'd adopted since would erase the memory, make it slowly ebb and fade, but they only ever intensified it. Made the lines sharper. Made the colors pop.

He'd talked me into it. I mean, sure, yeah, I wasn't exactly fighting him off. I hadn't warned him to stay away or asked him to stop calling. I didn't turn away from his kisses, and I didn't shift out of his hugs. But it was definitely because of him that it happened. His sweet little mouth. His fucking words for persuading.

You wanna know how I lost my virginity?

In the back seat of a family sedan in a cemetery no one's even heard of.

Fucking among corpses, sex between skeletons. It must be some kind of a sick fore-shadowing, a twisted comparison to what I've become.

I used to be better. I used to get good grades. I used to trust willingly.

After we did it for the first time, I bled for a day straight. He was big, and rough, and it wasn't like I'd imagined, always dreamed of when I was younger. He didn't whisper in my ear. He didn't call me any loving little names. He didn't even kiss me afterwards. He just put his pants on a drove me home. I sat in my bathroom all night and tried not to cry, but all I felt was empty.

I refused to do it after that. He pushed for a while, and then got pissed and gave up, and the next week, he was back with his ex-girlfriend. The next day after I'd seen them together, making out in the parking lot next to his truck, rumors had spread. He'd told everyone that I was obsessed with him. He said I sent him pictures of myself naked. He said that I basically begged him to fuck me and, because he felt _sorry_ for me, he finally gave in and "gave me what I wanted." Like he did me a fucking favor.

Since then, it's been hell. The whole student body has turned against me, refusing to disbelieve anything that comes out of their Golden Boy's mouth. He was the most popular boy in school. They swallowed everything he fed them. They stare as I walk. The spread their hands to whisper behind. They call out names when I pass. And he was at the head of the hanging party.

But I'm not a victim. I don't even fucking care about them. Everything has only made me harder. It's been tough. But I'm tougher.

I never told my parents. I don't know what they would have done. It doesn't exactly matter now anyway. I'm no longer _that_ girl.

* * *

Alice sat in the driver's seat of her green VW Bug, pale and pretty in a little blue dress that spills like water over her little legs, and stared at me open-mouthed. It was the day after the little incident at Mike Newton's house, and I could guess what she was looking at. The bite.

"It's nothing," I said before she could even ask. I climbed into the passenger's seat and slammed the door, waiting for her to turn back and start driving.

"What the hell happened?" I ignored her question, leaning up to fumble with the knobs of the radio, silently praying that she would just drop it and let it go. But I should have known better. This was _Alice_, after all.

The car hadn't moved and I could feel her eyes still on me, but I was afraid to turn and look at her. I turned to the window instead, staring out at the windows of my house. Through the blinds, I could faintly see my mother standing in the morning light by the stove, cooking breakfast. As I watched, my dad sashayed in, tie hanging untied around his neck, dancing up to her and making her laugh, and as he grabbed her to make her spin, I saw that his mouth was moving in exaggerated song. I wondered what exactly he was singing and felt the soft indent of loneliness start to creep in.

I don't know when I stopped telling Alice things, but I had. I wished so much that I could, that I could sit and spill my life into her waiting hands to fix and mend like I knew she was capable of. But I couldn't. I didn't know why.

Alice sighed. "Are you going to tell me or not?"

I couldn't answer her because tears had started to crowd my throat painfully, making me feel ridiculous. As I watched, my mother and father started to kiss softly. I closed my eyes to get away from the image and the questions and to lock my tears in.

Alice sighs again, softer this time, and clicks to shift into drive.


End file.
